Standing during worship, breathing out the words of Kristene DiMarco’s song “Take Courage” as a prayer of peace for my soul, I caught myself contemplating the past few years. I had recently left a position I loved to engage in a life I needed. Years of working a...

At a prayer chapel on top of a hillside in Redding, California, I sat on the grass overlooking the city just one year after a raging fire swept through, destroying everything in its path. The Carr Fire jumped the Sacramento River, blew through three counties, and took...

I’m the youngest of five children, as well as the only girl. It’s often assumed that I must have been the favorite in my family, but life was more complicated than that, and it would take volumes to explain how emotional issues arose in a family with two loving,...

A few months ago, I had cataract surgery on my left eye. As soon as the anesthesia wore off, the vision in that eye began to clear. For several days afterward, I found myself alternating closing my eyes, right eye then left, amazed at the comparison. I was genuinely...

Have you ever chased love? Like many women of my generation, I found love to be elusive, especially in my formative years. With the way society’s emphasis on finding love diverges from the church’s view, the waters were already muddy when I first dipped my toe in. The...

At the age of twenty-seven, I stood in a church on Mother’s Day and wept. I’d been diagnosed with a condition that made it difficult to bear children, and being a mother had been the dream of my life. Even in elementary school, my career goals always revolved around...